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"allusion"
Definition: A brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or event--real or fictional.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "to play with"
Examples and Observations:
- "Even sports newsletters allude to [Robert] Frost. When a New York Giants tackle was diagnosed as having cancer, Inside Football commented, 'The rest, since there was no more to build on there, turned to their affairs.' That's an allusion to a 1916 Frost poem about a boy's accidental death: 'No more to build on there. And they, since they/ Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.' (The poem's title is 'Out, Out--,' itself an allusion by Frost to Shakespeare; after Lady Macbeth dies, Macbeth speaks of life's shortness, 'Out, out, brief candle!')"
(William Safire, "On Language: Poetic Allusion Watch," The New York Times, July 24, 1988)
- "The inspiration for teaching girls to expect less than boys comes from a range of cultural sources, religious, literary, psychiatric, and pop. Even in the Bible, exceptional, independent women like Rebecca, Sarah, Deborah, or Ruth are practically 'unknowns' compared with the infamous Eve or Delilah."
(Paula Stern, "The Womanly Image," Atlantic Monthly)
- "I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does."
(Warren Buffett)
- "I was taught that everything is attainable if you are prepared to give up, to sacrifice, to get it. Whatever you want to do, you can do it, if you want it badly enough, and I do believe that. I believe that if I wanted to run a mile in four minutes I could do it. I would have to give up everything else in my life, but I could run a mile in four minutes. I believe that if a man wanted to walk on water and was prepared to give up everything else in life, he could do that."
(Stirling Moss)
 Pronunciation: ah-LOO-zhen |
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